Inviting People In, On Purpose

For the past couple of months, I haven’t written here… intentionally, as it turns out.

Not because nothing was happening. Quite the opposite. We’ve been heads down learning something I avoided for a long time: marketing.

For most of my career, I believed in a simple idea: build something good, open the doors, and people will show up. And for a while, that worked. Word of mouth carried us. Regulars became advocates. The experience did the talking.

But growth has a way of exposing what you don’t actually know.

Over the past few months at The 601 Group, we’ve started our first real, intentional marketing efforts. Not dabbling. Not “let’s post and see what happens.” Real campaigns. Real dollars. Real learning curves.

• We’ve sent our first direct mail pieces.

• We’ve run social media ads that forced us to clarify who we’re actually for.

• We’ve targeted corporate groups instead of hoping they’d wander in.

• We’ve hosted event planners inside The Local Epicurean to show them what’s possible.

• And Gina has stepped into TV interviews and local promotions to put a face to the brand.

None of it came naturally.

Marketing is humbling when you’re used to building quietly and letting quality speak for itself. It forces decisions. It asks uncomfortable questions. It exposes fuzzy thinking immediately. If your message isn’t clear, the market lets you know quickly and without mercy.

I’ve learned that “open the doors and they’ll show up” isn’t a strategy. It’s a phase. A useful one, maybe. But not a scalable one.

What surprised me most is that good marketing doesn’t feel like shouting. It feels like translation. Taking what lives in your head and your heart and turning it into something others can understand, want, and act on - without being in the room to explain it.

It also forces alignment. You can’t market what you haven’t decided. You can’t invite people into an experience you can’t clearly describe. And you can’t grow thoughtfully without choosing who you’re growing for.

We’re still early. We’re still learning. Some things have worked. Some things absolutely haven’t. But the shift matters.

The work now isn’t just building great experiences. It’s learning how to invite people into them on purpose.

That’s why the writing paused.

We were in class.

And now that lesson feels worth sharing.

- Mike and Gina

This is the first in a series on what we’re learning the hard way as we build The 601 Group.